New research shows that seniors who participate in the SNAP program are much less likely to be admitted to nursing homes and hospitals, demonstrating the power of investing in social services to reduce health care costs and improve health outcomes.

The fresh fruit, frozen vegetables and salad Karen Seabolt eats help her “do more of what I need to do to live a better life,” she says. The 66-year-old from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has diabetes and is paralyzed on her right side from a stroke.

“It really comes in handy towards the end of the month. You may run out of money, but you always have your SNAP benefits. They’re for food only, so you’re not tempted to do without medicine to get food,” she told us.

Large-scale collection of patient data into disease-specific databases, or registries, is vital to research. These registries house standardized information on patients’ diagnoses, care, and outcomes, supporting large-scale comparison and analysis which can lead to better population health management and interventions. But can disease registries also help to move us closer to patient-centered care?

We’re learning from examples overseas that, with the help of new interactive technologies, they can.

Sweden created a disease registry for rheumatology that is much more than a data storage house. The Swedish Rheumatology Quality Registry (SRQ) is an interactive tool that helps patients and doctors prepare for and make better use of their office visits. It helps them to work like a team—to “co-produce” care together.

The United States spends more on health care than any other developed nation, yet a recent study suggests social services could have a greater impact on health outcomes.

Modified image. Original photo by Ervins Strauhmanis.

In a blog post for The New York Times, Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, detailed important—and importantly nonmedical—barriers to health that he had witnessed in his patients: a man who couldn’t fathom worrying about his blood pressure when he needed to find food and a place to sleep, a diabetic without reliable access to a refrigerator to store insulin, a mother fretting that mold and cockroaches in her apartment were exacerbating her son’s asthma. Medical care might be necessary for these patients. But that care alone is unlikely to be sufficient.

That’s why the situation for schools in Lawrence, Mass., was particularly concerning back in 2010. At the time, more than one out of every four Lawrence kids dropped out of high school. This led the Massachusetts Department of Education to put Lawrence’s schools into receivership by 2012, placing them under new management to safeguard state assets. The state-appointed “receiver,” was granted authority to develop an intervention plan to overhaul the schools through steps you might expect such as expanding the school day and replacing half the districts’ principals.

But the district also took one critical step by acknowledging that a family’s financial stability strongly influences how well children do in school—and whether they drop out.

Researchers: RWJF wants to fund your best ideas, and most rigorous study designs, to help us learn what works to promote the health of everyone in America.

What does it take for Americans to lead healthier lives? Seems like a simple question, but it takes research to get answers we can act on.

Research is how we will discover what happens to resident and community health when a low-income community in Seattle—pocked with aging infrastructure and troubled, publicly subsidized housing—is transformed into one that sports mixed-income housing, new parks and services that support well-being. It’s a way we can measure the value of litigation aimed at forcing school districts in California to comply with state requirements for physical education in schools. Through research, we can pinpoint whether the presence of children in a defendant’s life influences sentencing decisions. And only through research can we further understand how criminal sentences impact the overall health and living arrangements of these children.

Doctors and patients want to talk transparently about the costs and value of health care, but it’s easier said than done.

Health care is too often the most stressful part of the American family's budget. In a 2015 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 42 percent of respondents reported that it is somewhat or very difficult to afford health services. This difficulty ranked higher than monthly utilities, housing, food expenses and transportation costs. In the same survey, more than half of respondents said that making information about the price of medical appointments, procedures and tests more available to patients should be a “top health care priority” for the President and Congress.

Rising out-of-pocket costs helped shape these attitudes, and they are hitting patients in the U.S. at all levels. For people with job-based insurance, the number of individuals with plan deductibles—and the size of those deductibles—has grown rapidly in recent years. In 2015, the rate of covered workers enrolled in a plan with an annual deductible of $1,000 or more for single coverage was 63 percent, a significant jump from 10 percent in 2006. This year, deductibles in marketplace plans are even higher than employer insurance, averaging $3,064 for coverage in the popular "silver" tier. For low-income marketplace enrollees, they might qualify for cost-sharing reductions, but they aren’t completely shielded from out-of-pocket expenses.

For the second year running, more women than men have signed up for coverage in health insurance marketplaces during open enrollment under the Affordable Care Act. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, enrollment ran 56 percent female, 44 percent male, during last year’s open enrollment season; preliminary data from this year shows enrollment at 55 percent female, 45 percent male—a 10 percentage point difference.

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